56. Before

Bleach, coffee, latex and, underneath it all, the delicate hint of human shit. But when you spend long enough breathing in even the most intoxicating perfume, you kind of get used to it.

The nurses get me an extra cot so I can sleep next to Mum. I hold her hand through the nights. Her other hand is cuffed to the bed.

Mum, Miss Smith. Miss Smith, Mum. She said it was important I call her what all the other students did so as not to mark out our special relationship. When I was in year seven I remember it physically hurt me.

Was she ashamed of me? Did she not want anyone knowing she was my mother?

I was so hurt, I started calling her Miss Smith in my head. If she wanted space, she'd get space. And it just stuck. That's when I started keeping things from her. That long ago. Little things, and then everything.

It was also, I guess, because I hated that that was her name. That we were both Smiths, rather than Hewitts, like my dad. That she was still a Miss. And being me, rather than avoiding it, I forced myself to look at it every day.

I take sip of the weak orange squash one of the nurses brought me. I know what must be happening while I watch the numbers and lines on her monitor. The police are gathering statements from all the children at school, and all of them are saying they've seen her flirting with the older boys, that they've heard she slept with past students, that she has a thing for Tristan.

No one really believes it. But what a thrill to make it real, to be able to look back one day and share a story about a paedophile teacher you once had. A woman, no less.

She died back in that classroom. Tristan killed her. The paramedics brought her back to life. And no one thinks she'll wake up.

The windows in here don't open properly, just a two-inch crack. There's a vent in the middle one and I watch its pink blades twirl in the sunshine. A fly whines about then batters itself against the glass.

We've been here four days and Dad has been to visit two times. He hasn't touched her. When I asked if he'd brought any of the stuff I'd asked him to bring, he winced and said sorry. He'd remembered only my mother's dressing gown with the herons on it, the one he'd got her last Christmas.

I told him that the doctors said she might be able to hear us, but he had sat with his head in his hands and then turned to chat to the woman in the other bed. In moments he charmed her, getting her to laugh till she told him off for the damage being done to her stitches.

‘Please wake up,' I whisper. ‘Please, please, wake up.'

After the police told me that Mum was under arrest, my ears started ringing so loudly I couldn't hear. I sat still and silent, my mind blank, and then my dad left the room and I snapped out of it.

I told them everything about what Tristan, Frances, Mina and Lydia did to me. But I don't think they believed me. I had already lied about the graze on my cheek, about what I'd been doing that night, and my saying Tristan had just tried to rape me, right after I'd learned my mother had been accused of doing the same to him, just seemed a bit too convenient.

Maybe if I had cried, it would have helped.

Mum always says I need to learn how to inhabit my characters.

I flop my legs out of bed and get up to go to the toilet. The first two days a policeman was stationed outside the ward, but the doctors don't think Mum is waking up. She has a broken cheekbone, arm, ribs, a bruised windpipe and a fractured skull. There was evidence of intercourse and some bruising, but the doctors say it's not conclusive enough to be considered evidence of rape.

But I know, don't I?

I go down to the café and buy myself a Snickers and notice I only have two pounds left. I wonder when my dad will come again, or if there's a cashpoint nearby. It doesn't matter though. The nurses have been letting me eat the meals my mum would be having if she were awake.

They don't know why she's cuffed to the bed.

I stand outside for a moment, watching the cars pulling in and out of the car park, the people's faces, tired and dry. There's a man clutching a newborn baby to his shoulder, singing quietly as he jiggles it.

It's strange that my dad isn't here, isn't it? It's strange that it doesn't feel stranger. But he's never really here, even when he is. I guess he really doesn't love her. I guess I was right all along.

When I get back to the ward, there are two nurses in the room, and one turns to look at me and she gives me a smile and I rush forward.

Mum is propped up, not quite upright, and her eyes are open. Someone has taken the tube out of her mouth.

‘Mum?'

Her eyes wander over and she looks at me.

She's awake. My mum is awake.